Little Women eBook

“You precocious chick! Who put that into
your head?” said Jo, enjoying the innocent revelation
as much as the Professor.

“’Tisn’t in mine head, it’s
in mine mouf,” answered literal Demi, putting
out his tongue, with a chocolate drop on it, thinking
she alluded to confectionery, not ideas.

“Thou shouldst save some for the little friend.
Sweets to the sweet, mannling,” and Mr. Bhaer
offered Jo some, with a look that made her wonder
if chocolate was not the nectar drunk by the gods.
Demi also saw the smile, was impressed by it, and
artlessy inquired. ..

“Do great boys like great girls, to, ’Fessor?”

Like young Washington, Mr. Bhaer ‘couldn’t
tell a lie’, so he gave the somewhat vague reply
that he believed they did sometimes, in a tone that
made Mr. March put down his clothesbrush, glance at
Jo’s retiring face, and then sink into his chair,
looking as if the ‘precocious chick’ had
put an idea into his head that was both sweet and
sour.

Why Dodo, when she caught him in the china closet
half an hour afterward, nearly squeezed the breath
out of his little body with a tender embrace, instead
of shaking him for being there, and why she followed
up this novel performance by the unexpected gift of
a big slice of bread and jelly, remained one of the
problems over which Demi puzzled his small wits, and
was forced to leave unsolved forever.

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

UNDER THE UNBRELLA

While Laurie and Amy were taking conjugal strolls
over velvet carpets, as they set their house in order,
and planned a blissful future, Mr. Bhaer and Jo were
enjoying promenades of a different sort, along muddy
roads and sodden fields.

“I always do take a walk toward evening, and
I don’t know why I should give it up, just because
I happen to meet the Professor on his way out,”
said Jo to herself, after two or three encounters,
for though there were two paths to Meg’s whichever
one she took she was sure to meet him, either going
or returning. He was always walking rapidly,
and never seemed to see her until quite close, when
he would look as if his short-sighted eyes had failed
to recognize the approaching lady till that moment.
Then, if she was going to Meg’s he always had
something for the babies. If her face was turned
homeward, he had merely strolled down to see the river,
and was just returning, unless they were tired of
his frequent calls.

Under the circumstances, what could Jo do but greet
him civilly, and invite him in? If she was tired
of his visits, she concealed her weariness with perfect
skill, and took care that there should be coffee for
supper, “as Friedrich—­I mean Mr.
Bhaer—­doesn’t like tea.”

By the second week, everyone knew perfectly well what
was going on, yet everyone tried to look as if they
were stone-blind to the changes in Jo’s face.
They never asked why she sang about her work, did
up her hair three times a day, and got so blooming
with her evening exercise. And no one seemed
to have the slightest suspicion that Professor Bhaer,
while talking philosophy with the father, was giving
the daughter lessons in love.